#7. August's Street Trees (1)
A terrible thing had happened. A viral pneumonia that emerged from Wuhan, China, had swept across the globe in about half a year. Even now, with major countries managing to suppress the spread of infections, the officially confirmed cases numbered around 3.1 million, and the death toll had surpassed 200,000, still ticking upward by the moment. Developing nations couldn't even produce reliable statistics.
Watching this unfold left me more than a little baffled.
Mana Essence abundance should have been a hostile environment for microorganisms like bacteria or viruses.
The Round Table Cabinet, the organization my mentor had been part of, had once conducted bioweapon research at the behest of the British government before they cut ties. But every attempt to create magical diseases ended in failure. Bacteria are small. Viruses are even smaller. The souls inhabiting micrometer- and nanometer-scale organisms couldn't meet the minimum conditions for etching a circuit. In fact, pathogens heavily exposed to Mana Essence and mana power died off even faster than if exposed to ultraviolet light.
If they could just etch circuits into microorganisms, their tiny size would mean minimal Mana Essence requirements, allowing them to function meaningfully even in Essence-depleted environments... That had been the British government's line of thinking. But it was all in vain.
And yet, here was a global pandemic. Was the disease, which should have spread even worse, being somewhat contained by Mana Essence? Or had some unknown variable I wasn't aware of amplified its spread? My head leaned toward the former, but my gut couldn't settle. Recent headaches at pharmaceutical companies and biotech firms over reduced culture yields for strains and cell lines pointed that way too...
Maybe the imperialists' experiments had some fundamental flaw.
"Are you feeling unwell anywhere, sir?"
Snapping out of my reverie, I found Suyeon's face peering at mine, a bit too close.
"Not particularly."
The head of the organization couldn't afford to show uncertainty. I schooled my expression to neutrality and replied evenly.
"Just thinking how unlucky this all is."
"...I'm sorry. This is my fault for making the wrong call."
"No, that's not what I mean. You've done excellently."
Her apology stemmed from the arms supply contract with the Guangdong Triad—effectively the Chinese Communist Party. Their order had a strict deadline. But on reflection, that deadline had hobbled not just us, but the Chinese negotiators too. It was an order from on high: resolve it before then, no matter what.
Suyeon had exploited that perfectly. In an atmosphere where the deal seemed all but sealed, she feigned weakness, conceding point after point, luring the greedy Chinese team—blinded by easy wins and thoughts of skimming off the top—into pushing absurd demands right up to the wire. The diverse contract items made stalling easy, with varying margins on each.
When the moment was ripe, Suyeon unleashed her pent-up "rage" and flipped the table. The post-report transcript captured it:
"We've already made unprecedented concessions. And yet you... you've crossed a line you shouldn't have. This is truly insulting."
"We won't be doing business with you anymore. Goodbye."
Suyeon's justification was face, and for the Chinese, face was a life-or-death matter. They'd made the outrageous demands themselves—who could they blame? Having assumed the deal was done and not lined up backups, they had no choice but to make massive concessions to placate the "furious" Suyeon. Missing the deadline would shatter them.
If only it ended with things just falling apart.
Performance rivalries and factional infighting in the Communist Party were notoriously brutal. Imagine filing optimistic progress reports only to botch it with greed. Would your direct superior's rage over lost results and embezzlement stop at mere discipline?
In the end, the final deal closed on highly favorable terms. The strategy was simple; execution was another beast. If it were as easy as it sounded, every stock-savvy person would be a millionaire. Suyeon's performance here marked a step beyond what I'd known and trusted.
Propping my chin, I said, "Let me be clear. Those deaths aren't on you. That was just bad luck too. No one could have predicted the virus would spread that far. No one could have."
"No. It was well within predictable bounds. We had reliable intel."
"I saw that intel too."
"..."
"I'm saying again: you're not at fault. This is my judgment."
"...Understood. My apologies."
Suyeon dipped her head briefly. Her persistent self-blame came from the five of our guys who entered Thailand during transport and died from pneumonia-dengue complications. Rough routes and quarantine delays meant news traveled slow.
Common sense said a pandemic warranted delaying delivery. But this market had no common sense—especially not the Chinese. They pressured us relentlessly to meet the deadline, terrified the whole project might collapse amid the crisis. Then no more embezzling, right? Fucking Chinese bastards.
I gazed steadily at Suyeon. She met my eyes for a moment, then lowered hers demurely.
She hasn't changed since way back when.
There was no sorrow in her self-recrimination. Having observed her for so long, I could roughly discern her emotions from the patterns of her limbic system activation—usually just a vague sense that she felt something.
Thus, her sense of responsibility focused solely on the losses inflicted on me by her misjudgment. The faint prefrontal signals were surely guilt toward me.
Five dead. No small loss. It had stung when I heard. Frontline international smugglers were elite strike team equivalents to my security detail—valuable assets. Each fluent in one or more foreign languages like natives, trained in survival and combat for worst-case scenarios, with iron loyalty and adaptability to self-terminate and erase traces if needed. Valued at tens of billions each at minimum. People aren't made overnight like money; irreplaceable.
If cash could revive them, I'd pay a hundred billion without regret. Not chump change, but barely a top soccer player's salary. To demand peak performance, build the peak team.
"Boss."
"Hm?"
"If not the Thailand issue, what did you mean by bad luck? Are you worried about President Kim Jae-hwan?"
"...Not that either."
Kim Jae-hwan was Yeouido Kim's real name. He'd reported losses topping 300 billion in the pandemic crash. Despite our preparations for a downturn, timing aside. I'd be lying if I said it didn't disappoint. But who has investments without failures? Demanding infallible success turns an organization into one that hides failures.
The loss was near-act-of-God; I trusted Jae-hwan would emerge a sharper investor. My regret lay elsewhere.
"What chafes is being sidelined for half a year right when every moment counts."
"Ah."
Suyeon nodded in understanding. We'd scouted key sites in January and February before global border lockdowns for pandemic control. But when we needed every edge over the Round Table, additional surveys blocked? A bitter blow. Many mid-tier nations still had ports and airports shuttered.
The more I chewed on it, the harder it was to stifle a sigh. Of all the rotten luck.
"Turn on the TV."
Suyeon hit the remote's power button. The announcer's voice filled the office immediately. We always tuned to news here.
Half-listening to incidents while poring over her report, I looked up at Olympic news.